Harry Potter: The Guardians Awaken
by PlotbunniesRUs
Summary: An ancient prophecy about four trees planted by the founders and four girls killed in an attack on Hogsmeade. What will happen when the prophecy is fulfilled?
1. Chapter 1

Minerva McGonagall was shocked.

Not by the event itself. The attack on Hogsmeade Station had been unforeseen, but only because of blindness on the part of those who ought to have foreseen it. In retrospect, it was something they should have counted on and planned for. As it was, they'd managed to rally together, drive the Death Eaters away, and get the students up to the sanctuary of Hogwarts... but not before four students had been killed. All four were Muggleborn females – their bodies were lying on pallets in the hospital wing now... four bright, promising young women, gone in an instant and a flash of green light.

That was certainly shocking. But somehow, in the way that tiny things somehow tend to be more disturbing than large ones, not as much as the fact that Albus Dumbledore was rattled. He was sitting in a chair, facing the girls, eyes closed and hands visibly trembling. Nothing ever worried or frightened Albus... not that he let it show, anyway. He was the rock on which the little community of Hogwarts was built, and he was very much aware of it. Minerva knew, perhaps better than anyone else alive, that things did worry or frighten him, and worried or frightened him deeply, especially in these terrible days, but he knew he couldn't let it show. If Albus didn't know what to do, nobody did... and things would quite simply fall apart.

Now he was very visibly worried and frightened. Minerva was almost certain she knew why... and it had little directly to do with the retroactively predictable attack upon the Hogwarts Express.

"Have you notified the families yet?" he asked. His voice, too, was shaking.

"No, Professor," replied Minerva. "I expected you'd want to wait."

He nodded and, Minerva followed his gaze as he opened his eyes to look over the girls. None of them had ever been terribly remarkable. Ravenclaw's Nadia Bell was mousey-haired and grey-eyed, took notes in six colours, and had the tidiest handwriting of anybody Minerva could remember teaching, but wasn't really very good at magic. Her favourite subject was History of Magic, and Minerva had always privately suspected that Nadia would grow up to teach either that or Muggle Studies. Now here she was, dead only days after her fifteenth birthday.

Hufflepuff's Jessica MacGregor had been plump and unattractive, with uncontrollable sandy blonde hair and big blue eyes that could fill with tears at the drop of a hat. Her handwriting was an unreadable scrawl, and her favourite subject was Care of Magical Creatures, though she was at the top of her class at Charms. Minerva had always found her overly-emotional nature and habit of humming off-key during exams terribly annoying.

Slytherin's Verona Ash was technically a half-blood. Her mother was the unfortunate squib scion of the not-very-prominent but still pureblooded Micarelli family. Maria Micarelli had married a Muggle policeman, and Verona had inherited from her mother's side both her dark Italian looks – she was easily the prettiest of the four casualties – and the magical ability that had apparently skipped a generation. Although a talented and ambitious student, Verona had been lonely and friendless in Slytherin, where many of the other students refused to associate with her on account of her magic-less parents. Her best – and only – friend had been Lily Evans of Gryffindor.

And by some terrible coincidence, it just so happened that Lily Evans was the last of the four. She had limp red hair that she'd always kept in two skinny, uneven braids and gray-green eyes that were usually directed at the ground. Lily was gifted at Charms and Transfiguration, but so painfully shy that Minerva couldn't remember the last time she'd said a word in public. The only person Lily ever seemed to talk to was Verona... the two had been inseparable. Apparently, they still were.

Minerva glanced at Albus. She had a good idea what he was thinking... it was impossible not to think about that damned prophecy. Minerva had always had her doubts about it, and now, looking at the four bodies, it seemed downright impossible. Surely, a prophecy like that required superwomen... not these four eminently ordinary little girls.

Albus glanced up and met Minerva's gaze, then sighed heavily. "Well," he said, "I suppose somebody had best contact them, and preferably as soon as possible. Dead bodies," he added dryly, "rarely improve with the keeping."

This sudden burst of dark humour was even more shocking than his very apparent worry and fear... Albus' sense of humour was frequently odd, but never in poor taste. He was plainly very concerned indeed.

"What did the scroll say?" Minerva asked. The scroll on which the prophecy was recorded, in tidy handwriting that might have been that of Godric Gryffindor himself, was kept in a carefully sealed drawer in Dumbledore's office. Whoever wrote it had put charms on it so that it could not be copied or memorized, although it was possible to remember the gist of it... and Minerva had not seen it in a great long time. She couldn't recall the details.

"That four girls would die, and their deaths would awaken the guardians of Hogwarts," said Dumbledore. The girls had died hours ago, and there was no sign yet of any guardians awakening.

"Nothing more specific?" asked Minerva.

He shook his head. "I suppose we shall have to simply wait and see. One tends to assume that when a prophecy and the attendant instructions have been passed down for a thousand and one years, they have been preserved for a reason."

A thousand and one years – that was right! It was 1974. Hogwarts had been founded in 973 AD, in September... a thousand and one years ago, exactly.

Albus sighed again. "Owl the parents, Minerva. They'll be upset enough that they were not immediately informed."

"Yes, Professor." She nodded. She picked up her skirts and headed off to her own office, to work on what she rather suspected would be the four most difficult letters she would ever have to write.

* * *

It was nearing midnight when Minerva gave up and put down her quill. She'd written drafts of her letters to the Ashes, Bells, Evanses, and MacGregors... several, in fact. The first had sounded too formal to her, the second too mushy, the third too much like newspaper obituaries, and finally she decided that she was just going to have to stop for tonight and piece together the best bits tomorrow morning, after she'd cleared her head with a good night's sleep. Right now, however, what she needed more than anything else was a good lungful of fresh air.

With that in mind, she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and headed down the steps to the back courtyard. She wasn't sure what had made her choose that particular place to go walking... but once she arrived, she realized that the idea of 'guardians' must have been preying on her mind, because there, on either side of the back gate that opened onto the Forbidden Forest, were the trees.

The trees; four of them, so ancient that they were all long dead. All that was left were their skeletal trunks, but they were allowed to keep standing more or less because they always had... nobody wanted to remove something that was so much a part of the landscape of Hogwarts.

And for some reason nobody could remember, they were called the Guardians.

There was a story that each of the founders had thrust his or her wand into the ground on this spot, and the magical wood had sprouted and grown within seconds into these magnificent trees; the one traditionally associated with Gryffindor was an oak, Hufflepuff's an apple, Ravenclaw's a willow, and Slytherin's a yew. All were so large that although they were dead, their titanic branches were still strong enough that younger students could climb them. Minerva wondered what they had looked like when they were alive... but then again, perhaps they never had been. Maybe they had always been as they were now... sleeping guardians, waiting for the right time to be awakened.

As Minerva stood looking at them, the clock at the front of the school began to sound midnight. She shut her eyes and counted... nine... ten... eleven...

But the chime for twelve didn't come.

She opened her eyes and looked around, wondering if she'd made a mistake about the time. _Was_ it only eleven? No, it couldn't be – she distinctly remembered hearing the little clock on her desk chime eleven an hour ago. The Hogwarts clock ran on magic; it had kept perfect time ever since it had been installed, over four hundred years ago... but now there was only silence.

But, Minerva realized, it wasn't just the clock that had fallen silent. In fact, there was no sound whatsoever... it was as if something were sucking all the noise out of the air – she couldn't even hear her own heartbeat, although she could feel that organ thumping against her ribs. This had to be magic! Was something...

Then there was a rustling. Minerva blinked and looked up at the trees, and saw to her surprise that the long-dead Guardians were putting out leaves; red and orange and yellow ones, which after a moment turned green, then curled up into buds.

They were going through the seasons in reverse, she thought... and then the trees began to shrink. Before long they had shrunk from giants to saplings, then to sprouts, and then they were gone. A moment passed, and then there was a sort of soundless explosion, a burst of silent air as waves of coloured light flashed over the ground – red, green, blue, and yellow. Then darkness and silence returned.

A moment later, the last chime sounded. Minerva looked up again...

The trees were gone.

A chill passed up Minerva's spine – the deaths of four girls would awaken the guardians. Well, _something_ had just happened to the trees that bore that name. But if they'd awoken, then where were they now? What did a thousand-year-old dead tree become when you woke it up?

She had to tell Albus about this.

Minerva pulled her shawl close around her shoulders and headed back inside as briskly as she could walk – which was surprisingly fast for somebody of her age. She climbed the stairs and let the back doors swing soundlessly open ahead of her.

And there she came face-to-face with a breathless Poppy Pomphrey.

"Oh, Professor McGonagall!" the mediwitch exclaimed. "I was just looking for you! The most incredible thing..."

Minerva's heart jumped into her throat. "What is it, Poppy?"

"The girls!" Madame Pomphrey exclaimed. "The four girls who died today... Professor, they're alive!"


	2. Chapter 2

"Verona!" shrieked Lily, sitting upright with a start.

But Verona wasn't there. Neither was the train, the platform, or the man in the black cloak. Lily was sitting up in bed, clutching sheets to her chest, looking at white curtains that had been drawn around the little space she was in. The hospital wing. She was in the hospital wing? What had happened?

She'd gotten off the Hogwarts express with Verona. It had been raining, and they'd been heading for the carriages... the memories were weirdly out of focus, as though she were watching them through fogged glass. Everything had been quite normal, and then all of a sudden there was chaos; students were screaming, adults were shouting, and a man in a big, shapeless black cloak had pushed his way out of the crowd and pointed his wand at Lily. Verona had shouted and jumped between her friend and the attacker, there'd been a flash of green light...

... and then she was here.

The white curtains around the bed were whisked aside and there was Madame Pomphrey, with Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore behind her. All three stared at her a moment as if she were some kind of unspeakable monster, but then Madame Pomphrey bustled forward and began fluffing up Lily's pillow.

"Lie down, Miss Evans," she said, putting a hand on Lily's shoulder to push her gently back down onto the bed. "You've had quite an evening."

Lily didn't want to lie down. "What happened?" she asked.

"We're not quite sure, dear," said Madame Pomphrey, "but you're all right, and that's the important thing. Now, you lie down, and I'll..."

"Where's Verona?" asked Lily, remembering the green flash. That _must_ have been a curse... it couldn't have been anything else. And Verona had jumped right into its path.

"Miss Ash is fine, Miss Evans," the mediwitch assured her, but Lily wasn't quite sure she believed it. At the end of the bed, Dumbledore and McGonagall were still standing there watching her as if afraid she might explode. "She's sleeping – I gave her a potion for it, and I'm going to give you one, too. You appear to be quite alive and whole, but I'd prefer to keep all four of you here overnight, just to be sure."

Lily blinked. "All four of us?"

Madame Pomphrey performed a summoning charm, and a cup and bottle of potion flew into her hands. "Yes, dear – you, Miss Ash, and two others. But you don't need to worry about that right now; you need to sleep. It's past midnight. Here you are." She held out the cup of potion.

"Where _is_ Verona?" Lily asked, not taking it yet.

"In the next bed over," said Madame Pomphrey. "Here, you can see her." She pushed the curtain back and there, indeed, was Verona, lying on her back with her long black hair spilling over the pillow. Her eyes were shut and she was breathing peacefully. Verona didn't sleep like that. She'd slept over at Lily's house so many times... Verona slept on her stomach, and hummed in her sleep. She looked like a corpse lying there.

"There," Madame Pomphrey said. "Now, take your potion, Miss Evans. You need to sleep."

"All right." Lily reluctantly accepted the cup. The contents were warm, with a layer of froth on top, and tasted creamy and lemony. She drained it and gave it back to Madame Pomphrey.

"Much better," the mediwitch said with an approving nod, and without another word she pulled the curtains shut again, and three sets of footsteps walked away. Lily could hear soft voices through the wall as the adults stepped into Madame Pomphrey's office to talk.

Lily lay down and pulled the covers up. This potion must take a while to work, she thought, because she didn't feel sleepy yet. That was funny, really. Most of Madame Pomphrey's potions – and you could tell which ones were her own inventions because they actually tasted _good_ – worked immediately, but here she was, wide awake and able to hear Verona breathing in the next bed.

She did not like the look she'd gotten at Verona. Maybe it was just the effect of the potion... but the too-peaceful sleep combined with the fact that Lily was almost sure her friend had taken a curse for her were deeply worrying. Maybe Verona was dead... or just not there anymore, the way people could get after being badly injured. If that were true, Madame Pomphrey definitely wouldn't tell Lily right away, not if Lily were hurt and needing to get better.

Lily knew she worried about Verona a lot – Verona herself had once said that Lily often sounded like her mother – but Verona needed to be worried about sometimes. When Lily had met her on the train, back in first year, Verona had been bright and eager, determined to be the best witch ever and join the ranks of legendary sorcerers her mother's family had produced. A few weeks of mockery at the hands of the Slytherins had quickly cured her of that. The other three girls in that year's Slytherin class – a set of triplets: Cissa, Bella, and Andy Black – were invariably cruel to her. They'd taken up the practice of laughing derisively at anything Verona said whether it was funny or not, until the poor girl had all but ceased to speak to anybody but Lily.

Lily herself, among the friendlier Gryffindors, was not such a target... but unlike Verona, she had no glorious ancestors to make her feel like she was capable of great things. All she had was a patent attorney father, a nurse mother, and a bossy older sister who considered her a freak. Lily's parents were proud of her, but they often seemed a little scared of her, too, as if afraid she'd turn them into frogs if they did something to annoy her. This meant she had much more freedom than her sister, and Petunia resented it horribly.

Nor did Lily have many friends at school. In first year she hadn't had any idea how to talk to the witches and wizards all around her. So many of them had been raised in an environment so different from her own. She'd made friends with Verona because Verona was also more or less Muggle-born... but by second year, when Lily had begun to gain some confidence, all the cliques were already formed, and none of them wanted new members. That left Lily and Verona alone, with no-one except each other.

Now Verona had stepped in between Lily and the curse that man had been about to cast at her... Lily buried her face in the pillow. She literally did not know what she would do if Verona were dead. She could not imagine attending a Hogwarts without Verona Ash in it. And on top of that, there was still something eerily wrong with her memory. She could _remember_ all these things... but it was like remembering a dream, or something she'd seen in a movie. Lily _knew_ that Verona was her friend whom she loved, but trying to call up actual _images_ of anything before she'd awakened a few minutes ago was not working very well.

When was this bloody potion going to work? Lily would have loved to be able to fall asleep and forget about all this for a while. Maybe it wasn't taking effect because she was thinking too much about all these awful things... that tended to keep people awake, and perhaps it was powerful enough to counteract the potion. She ought to relax.

She wiggled around in bed, digging her body deeper into the mattress. Breathe deeply, she told herself, and realized suddenly that she was lying in exactly the same position as Verona had been. Maybe the potion wasn't working for Verona either, and she'd only been pretending or trying to go to sleep. Maybe if Lily sat up and called her friend's name again... but Madame Pomphrey might hear. She was, after all, just in the next room. Lily could still hear her talking, although the words were indistinct. She shut her eyes and tried to let the murmuring lull her to sleep.

But that didn't work either. In fact, the longer she lay there listening, the more the voices seemed to come into focus. Lily wasn't sure how far away Madame Pomphrey and the two professors were, but she could hear them as though they were standing next to her bed.

"It couldn't be a spell – nobody entered or left," the mediwitch was saying. "And necromancy only animates bodies, it can't revitalize them. It's as if the curses simply never touched them."

Despite the hospital wing's sheets, which were charmed to be as warm as blankets without being as heavy, Lily suddenly felt terribly cold. _Who_ was Madame Pomphrey talking about? What _about_ animated dead bodies? Was she saying Verona had become some kind of _zombie_? The idea was too utterly awful to contemplate.

"Well," said Professor Dumbledore. "It is plain that we will not reach any kind of solution to this tonight. All three of us are just as tired, if not more so, than those unfortunate young women, and tired minds can sometimes miss the obvious. I, for one, am going to bed."

"Me also," said Professor McGonagall, sounding as if she would like nothing better. "It feels like this afternoon was years ago."

It was nice to know Lily wasn't the only one who felt as if events earlier today had happened in another lifetime. Maybe it was just shock, and her memory would clear up given time.

"I'll check on the girls again, and then retire also," said Madame Pomphrey. "They'll probably be able to go to class tomorrow, believe it or not."

Lily shut her eyes and breathed evenly when the mediwitch checked in on her, and stayed that way after she'd gone. It seemed she was going to have to get to sleep on her own – the potion was definitely not doing its job. Lily's mother had told her once that the best way to get to sleep was to imagine steady, heavy rain, so she tried that, pretending she could hear it pattering on the roof and windows.

It actually began to work. She relaxed, and random mental pictures began drifting before her eyes – things that aren't quite dreams, but aren't quite conscious imaginings, either. There was a big oak tree, covered in autumn leaves, and...

Lily sat up again with a start; she'd remembered something else! After the green light, there'd been a flash of red... and it hadn't been cold like the green, but warm and comforting, like some big, kind, furry creature lifting her up and a voice telling her that she was safe and warm, and everything would be all right. And _that_ memory wasn't like the earlier ones. It didn't feel like a dream... whatever had happened before it, the red light had been absolutely real.


	3. Chapter 3

She was walking in a garden, and it was winter.

Verona knew very well that she was dreaming, which was a bit odd, because as far as she could ever remember, she didn't dream. The divination teacher insisted that _everybody_ had dreams, and that remembering those dreams was a key to one's personal future, but after two weeks, the only thing that had turned up in Verona's dream diary was a vague note about a dream in which she was doing nothing more interesting than sitting in class. Her inability to have interesting dreams had earned her a failing mark in that unit and further derision from the peers she had long ago learned to ignore... and yet here she was, having what she definitely knew was a dream, and having it so clearly that she _knew_ she would remember it the rest of her life.

When had she fallen asleep? She paused and put a finger in her mouth. Madame Pomphrey's stupid potion had taken _forever_ to work. It felt as if she'd lain awake for hours and hours, listening to the professors talk to the other three girls and then walk away and discuss worrying things like prophecies and necromancy. She had to be asleep now, because she was dreaming, but...

She shook her head – she was missing the dream. If she were aware that she was dreaming, it must be important, and it would probably do to pay attention to it. She raised her head – she was walking in what appeared to be the Alhambra; she'd visited it once with her family... but she doubted they ever _really_ got a heavy snowfall in southern Spain. Yet now the gardens and roofs were covered in six inches of snow, sparking in the cold winter sunlight. The yew bushes, carefully trimmed into the shapes of horses, were drooping under the weight of the snow, and the fountains were full of ice that must have been frozen in an instant as it leapt into the air. It reminded her of the passage in _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe_ about the water frozen on Mr. Beaver's dam.

Verona herself was wearing a trailing gown of emerald green velvet, embroidered around the neckline and the upper part of the sleeves with vines and leaves in silver. A weight around her hips was a heavy silver belt set with green gems and black and white pearls, and she was walking down a pebble path – she could feel the cold little stones on her bare feet – towards the largest of the frozen fountains. There was a big, two-handled silver cup sitting on the edge of the basin, with something important inside. Verona picked it up and looked into it...

... and then woke up to see Lily Evans' smiling face looking down at her.

Yesterday came back in a rush – sort of. The memories were oddly fuzzy, as if covered in spider webs, but that didn't seem very important. "Lily!" Verona sat up and gave her friend a hug. "I was worried you'd died! I wouldn't take my potion last night until Madam Pomphrey let me take your pulse and make sure you were okay!"

"I'm just fine," Lily assured her, rubbing her back. "We're all just fine, actually – Jessie from Hufflepuff and Nadia in Ravenclaw got hurt, too, but Madame Pomphrey patched us all up and she says we're well enough to go to class today.

That made Verona's face fall – class. With the other Slytherins, who considered her an interloper.

Lily promptly displayed her usual ability to read Verona's mind. "Just three more years, Ver," she said. "Hang in there – we can do it."

"Yeah." Verona managed to smile back at her. Lily was usually the only person who could make Verona smile.

The girls' things had all been brought to the hospital wing for them. Jessie and Nadia, who'd been up first, were already dressed and in the bathroom, brushing their teeth. Lily and Verona each pulled the curtains shut around their own beds and put on their uniforms. By the time they were finished that, the other girls were out of the bathrooms, and Verona went and stood in front of a mirror to brush her long black hair. Verona and her hair had a mutually antagonistic relationship – it got all dry and tangled and the ends split with annoying regularity. She would have loved to just chop it all off, but she kept it long for her mother, who thought it was beautiful.

Today, it was surprisingly cooperative, which was nice of it, all things considering. In fact, she barely had to brush it at all – normally, she spent a good hour working it into braidable shape, but today it just seemed to fall right into place, smooth and shiny. She pulled it back and tied it in place with a green scrunchie, then helped Lily get her own hair into its usual two French braids.

"How are we looking?" asked Lily.

"Presentable," replied Verona. Presentable was about all either girl could ever hope for.

"Yep," sight Lily, looking in the mirror. "Looks like that's as good as it's gonna get. Time to go face the world! You ready?"

"Ready when you are," Verona said.

It was a bit funny, really – or would have been, had Verona been as mean-spirited as her housemates sometimes seemed – to hear Lily say things like 'time to face the world!', because Lily was the one who avoided facing the world as much as possible. The professors knew better than to call on her in class, because she was as likely as not to faint before she made it to the blackboard to answer the question. She'd once confessed to Verona that, having been brought up by people with not even the basic knowledge of the wizarding world that Verona's mother had, she always felt as if she knew nothing, and was terrified that somebody would speak up and tell her she was wrong. It was a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, especially when Lily was the one who was always helping Verona with her homework, but there it was.

Verona liked to think that her own worst fear was somewhat more rational than that – Verona was afraid of disappointing her mother. Maria Ash had all her hopes pinned on her eldest daughter – the only one out of four children who had any magical talent. Verona represented Maria's validation, her proof to her family that her status as a squib did not make her utterly worthless, and the Micarellis treated her as such. Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, and miscellaneous relatives of all descriptions fawned over Verona while ignoring her siblings, who resented her for it and took as much pride as possible in being as Muggle-ish as they could: Amelia was determined to be a violinist when she grew up, Dante a policeman like their father, and Gabriella, the youngest, insisted she would be an astronaut... none wanted anything to do with magic.

As far as their relationship with the Micarellis went, everything Verona's family had was riding on her. She often found it a terrible burden.

Verona and Lily finished getting ready at just about the time Jessie and Nadia did, so the four of them went down to the great hall together... so they all got to hear the sudden utter silence when they walked in. It was as if somebody had cast a silencing charm over the entire room – conversation simply stopped cold, and over three hundred pairs of eyes, belonging to students and teachers both, turned on them.

"Did we do something wrong?" Verona whispered.

"I don't think so..." said Lily. "But Madame Pomphrey was talking last night, about necromancy..."

"You heard that, too?" asked Verona.

But all those eyes were still on them, waiting for them to take their seats, and whatever they had or had not done, they couldn't lurk in the doorway forever. Jessie and Nadia went off to their own seats, while Verona and Lily, heads down, went over to the Gryffindor table. Verona much preferred the company of Gryffindors to that of her own house. They weren't terribly friendly to her, but at least they didn't go out of their way to actively antagonize her, either.

The Slytherins, however, more than made up for the lack. The girls had to pass the Slytherin table to get to the Gryffindors, and as they did, Bella Black said, very loudly, "pity they couldn't have stayed dead."

That was absolutely the most awful thing Verona had ever heard one human being say about another... and maybe that was why it awoke in her the very uncharacteristic urge to turn around and hex Bella into the middle of next week. Or perhaps just punch her in the face. How _anybody_ could say a thing like that...

"It's okay, Ver," said Lily softly. "Don't let it bother you. She's not worth your time."

The two sat down across from Alice Templeton, who, while neither Lily nor Verona would have considered her a close friend, was generally nice to them. Alice looked up as they seated themselves and opened her mouth, but then closed it again without greeting them. Plates of waffles with syrup and whipped cream materialized on the table in front of them, and Lily and Verona dug in without saying anything.

Both, however, were quite painfully aware of the fact that everybody was still staring at them. The overall murmur of conversation that had been audible from the great hall before they entered it had not resumed – instead there was the hushed rustling of a lot of whispers, and every time Verona glanced up, she found dozens of eyes on her. She was usually good at ignoring such things, but today she quickly started to find it unbearable. Finally, too frustrated to eat, she let her fork drop to her plate with a clunk and looked at Alice.

"What _happened_?" she asked quietly. "Why is everybody looking at us?"

Alice stared at her. "Nobody told you?"

"If anybody told me, would I be asking?" hissed Verona.

"Verona!" breathed Lily.

"Sorry." Verona took a deep breath and calmed down. This wasn't like her... but then, she'd never been in a situation like this before. "But what did happen?"

"Everybody thought you were dead," said Alice. "The train station got attacked by followers of... of You-Know-Who. One of them shot a curse right at Lily and you jumped into the way, and we thought you were dead. You weren't breathing or anything. Even the professors thought you were dead. Then suddenly, this morning, Professor Dumbledore announced that you weren't dead after all. _I'm_ glad you're still alive," she added, "but the whole thing is weird."

Verona shuddered.

"They're saying the trees brought you back," Alice added.

"Trees?" Lily looked up. "I had a dream about trees..."

"The trees out back," Alice clarified. "They're gone. There's something floating around about a prophecy. But mostly everybody's just glad you're not dead."

"Bella Black isn't," grumbled Verona.

"Shhhh," said Lily, but it was perhaps the least emphatic 'shhhh' Verona had ever heard from her.


	4. Chapter 4

As first days of school went, that particular September the second was not particularly eventful. Lily's first class was Herbology, which was unfortunately with the Hufflepuffs rather than the Slytherins – she always worried about what might be happening to Verona when the two did not have classes together. Professor Sprout announced that they would be spending September studying the uses of mistletoe and asked them to get into pairs, which made Lily flinch. She was always the last to be chosen in anything that involved pairs.

Today, however, to her surprise, Jessie MacGregor came right up to her. "Do you want to work together?" she asked.

"I guess we could," said Lily.

Jessie smiled at her. "Great," she said. Let's go get some mistletoe."

Friendliness _was_ a Hufflepuff attribute, Lily reminded herself as they took sprigs from the sample plant while Professor Sprout asked if anybody knew the magical properties of mistletoe. But all the same, she suspected that Jessie had only approached her because of their shared experience yesterday... and she turned out to be quite right. As soon as the students were busy hanging sprigs of mistletoe to dry and could talk among themselves, Jessie asked her about it.

"You were hurt yesterday too, huh?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Lily.

"Did they tell you what happened?"

Lily shrugged. She frankly didn't want to think about it. The whole situation was too scary – especially the part where Alice had said they'd _died_. Was that why her memory was so fuzzy? The effect wasn't going away – everything she'd done since waking up last night was crystal-clear in her mind. It was only the stuff _before_ that which she still seemed to be viewing through a fogged window.

But no magic could bring somebody back from the dead – that was one of those things you learned very quickly, even though it wasn't exactly something the professors took any trouble to mention. So what, then... no, she definitely did not want to think about it.

Jessie, however, did. "Did you have any funny dreams last night?" she persisted.

Lily jumped – the answer to that was a resounding _yes_, and now that she'd been asked, all of a sudden she _desperately_ wanted to tell the dream to somebody. It seemed to be fighting to get out of her mouth. She, however, contained it, and just shrugged again. Talking about something so personal, and to a stranger, would be out of character for her. She was suddenly reminded of Verona's near outbursts at breakfast that morning...

"Because I did," said Jessie. "I had this dream... I think I was in China. There was this big palace with all golden roofs, and it was autumn – the trees were all red. I was in the garden and I was looking everywhere for something, and then I finally found this plate..." her voice trailed off and she gave Lily a goofy smile. "Dumb, huh?"

But Lily had gone cold. "No," she said, "no, I had a dream, too..." she couldn't keep it in any longer. "I don't know where I was, but I was in this big hall, like something out of Beowulf, and there was this big fire burning, and a sword in the fire that I had to pull out, but I was afraid of getting burned if I did..."

She and Jessie looked at each other. The dreams seemed very different on the surfaces, but yet they were so _similar_... in a foreign place, looking for some object that was very important. Or was it? "The plate was important, right?" asked Lily.

"Yeah," said Jessie. "I think there was something written on it, but I woke up before I could read it."

Lily nodded. "Did you... ask Nadia about anything like that?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," Jessie said. "I did. And she said she dreamed she was in Athens, trying to get down a staff that was hanging up in the Parthenon. So I wondered if you'd asked Verona."

"No," said Lily, who was now kicking herself for it. She'd been _tempted_ to tell Verona her dream, but had decided against it just because she generally didn't discuss her dreams and at the time, it had seemed like something she shouldn't talk about.

"Do you have a class with her today?" asked Jessie.

"Yeah, potions next period," Lily said. "I'll ask her about it then, promise."

A giggling commotion on the other side of the greenhouse made the girls both look up – James Potter and his friends were running around with a sprig of mistletoe, pressing their attentions on various of the prettier girls. Lily quickly lowered her eyes and tried to hide behind their mistletoe sample, hoping the boys would not see her. But then, they never did – she was not pretty, and therefore a nonentity to them. At least, she told herself, she'd gotten over the ridiculous crush she'd had on Potter last year. He was nothing but a jerk... and a jerk who hopefully would never, ever notice her.

Talking to Verona in potions was going to be difficult, she realized as she took her usual seat in the dingy old classroom half an hour later. The potions master hated hearing students talk in class... they wouldn't have a chance to properly speak until after everybody had gotten started brewing whatever they were going to make that day, and even then, he sometimes chose partners _for the_ students rather than allowing them to pick their own. There was a small chance that Lily wouldn't get to talk to Verona at all.

She _could_ sit next to her, though, and give her a reassuring smile as the class began. Verona looked decidedly worried about something... Lily wondered if she'd had a similar conversation with Nadia Bell from Ravenclaw as Lily herself had just had with Jessie.

Professor Agrippa was there before any of the students, as usual, so there was silence in the room as everybody took their seats. He waited for everybody to arrive and settle down before he began, and such was the oppressive silence in the room that it didn't actually take very long.

"Good morning, class," he said quietly. "This year, as you may have noticed, we will be starting with a unit on basic alchemy. Hopefully, you will be able to master some of the basics, and I will be awarding fifty house points to each individual who achieves a negredo. I do not realistically expect anyone to go further than that. Before we begin, we need to familiarize ourselves with the materials and terminology of alchemy."

Lily groaned silently. This was going to be a lecture class. Talking to Verona would have to wait for Divination, next period.

"So," said Professor Agrippa. "Who has been reading their textbook? What is _Aqua Regia_?"

Lily knew the answer, because she _had_ in fact been reading the book – alchemy had looked interesting. But she didn't put her hand up... she _never_ put her hand up and certainly couldn't start now. After all, what if she'd mis-remembered? The rest of the class either hadn't done any reading or was just as nervous as Lily, because only one hand actually rose – that of Severus Snape, the only individual in the potions class who voluntarily sat in the front row. Professor Agrippa looked at him and smiled.

"Perhaps somebody other than Severus," he said. Severus was the only student Professor Agrippa called by his given name.

Lily looked around, but nobody was offering anything. It wasn't a difficult question – the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she _did_ know the answer and knew the _right_ answer. Wasn't _anybody_ going to say anything? Usually the only time hands _did_ go up was after Professor Agrippa specified somebody other than Severus.

But there was silence. The potions master sighed. "Very well..." he began.

Lily couldn't stand it any longer – her hand shot up into the air.

Professor Agrippa's eyes widened. "Er – did you need a hall pass, Miss Evans?" he asked. Apparently that was the only reason he could think of why Lily would raise her hand.

"_Aqua regia_," said Lily, speaking very fast. "Is one part nitric acid to three parts hydrochloric acid and is the only substance able to dissolve gold and platinum."

"Ah." The professor's eyes widened further. "Excellent. Ten points to Gryffindor."

Lily lowered her hand and smiled. She'd done it – she'd really done it! She'd actually answered a question and nobody had laughed at her! Professor McGonagall would have been proud...

"Better give her twenty, Professor," said a voice from the back of the room. Lily looked over her shoulder, and there was James Potter, sitting there grinning like a Cheshire cat and looking right at her. "She's obviously been brewing garrulous potions in her spare time!"

"A garrulous potion makes you talk nonstop, stupid," said Alice.

"Well, she said like six words," Potter replied. "That's her whole quota for the _year_!"

A few people laughed. Professor Agrippa wasn't one of them.

"Ten points _from_ Gryffindor, Mr. Potter," he said, "for talking out of turn."

The rest of the class continued as mostly lecture and questions and answers. Lily didn't dare answer again... but as the only one in the class besides Severus who appeared to have done any advance reading, she _wanted_ to. And oddly enough, she wasn't even frightened about it. Just angry... angry at Potter for making fun of her and spoiling her moment of triumph.

Moment of triumph? What was she thinking? All she'd done was answer a question. If that was a moment of triumph, her standards were far too low.

When the class was over, she and Verona hurried out to start up to the divination tower... if they were ahead of the rest of the students, they'd be able to talk without being overheard. They weren't quite fast enough, though... James Potter and his cronies had left the room ahead of them, and as Lily stepped out, she found herself right under a sprig of mistletoe he'd apparently saved from herbology.

He grinned. "Oh, look. Mistletoe."

"Don't. Please." Lily stepped aside, but James stepped after her and leaned in. She had no idea what he was trying to accomplish... but she wasn't going to let him accomplish it. It was only _after_ she'd slapped the mistletoe out of his hand that she realized she should have just run away. She looked at the little twig lying on the floor and wished to God she knew how to apparate. She'd just _slapped_ a _real_ wizard, a guy whose parents and grandparents had been witches and wizards...

James blinked, then leaned down and scooped it up again. "Oops," he said, once again bringing his face uncomfortably close to hers, "I seem to have dropped my..."

She kept more control of herself this time, trying to duck under his arm and get away, but he stopped her by grabbing her wrist... then let out a sharp shout of pain and let go of both her and the mistletoe. It dropped to the tile again where it curled and blackened as if exposed to great heat.

"Ow!" exclaimed James, shaking his wrist as if he'd burned his hand. "Sheesh! You could have just said _no thank you_."

"No, I couldn't!" snapped Lily. "Because you idiots think 'no' means 'yes' and 'go away' means 'screw me senseless'!"

Complete silence fell over the hall, and Lily clapped both hands over her mouth. Forget apparate. Lily wished she could _die_.

Professor Agrippa cleared his throat. "Ten points from Gryffindor for Mr. Potter's behavior," he said, "and ten more for Miss Evans' language."

Lily hung her head. Verona grabbed her friend's arm. "C'mon, let's go," she whispered, and the two of them hurried off up the stairs to divination.


End file.
